China releases autonomous car guidelines, Alibaba interested

China has now become one of the few countries to allow autonomous vehicle testing on public roads. The government has recently released a national guideline for the same and wants to speed up the development of such vehicles in the county. The regulations will come into force from May 1, 2018.

According to the guidelines, autonomous prototypes should be either passenger of commercial vehicles and not 2-wheelers. They should also be able to keep up with the traffic. Further, they should be able to switch between autonomous mode and manual mode, where in a driver can take over the operation of the vehicle in case of any emergency.

Earlier, individual authorities issued permissions and guidelines for a limited area. Back in December 2017, Beijing became the first to issue a guideline and open a closed-off testing ground for autonomous vehicles. In March 2018, authorities in Shanghai issued first of the road test licenses to SAIC Motor Corp Ltd and Nio Auto, an electric vehicle start-up. Meanwhile, the government will also be studying the ways to improve the infrastructure for such vehicles.

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has also confirmed that it has been working on autonomous tech. Rivals Baidu and Tencent are the other two Internet majors in China who have expressed interest in developing self-driving technologies. While Tencent has paired up with automaker FAW Group, Baidu has gone solo and has even been granted a license to test its autonomous cars in Beijing. Alibaba has been conducting road test and is looking to hire 50 experts specializing in the field of autonomous vehicles.

China currently is the largest car market in the world and it is expected to become the biggest autonomous vehicle market as well. Recently, the country removed ownership limits on foreign carmakers.

Source - China Daily

Image Source - Quartz